Via Media Podcast, Episode 22 Sola Scriptura and the Church Carl Beckwith October 3, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2019/sola-scriptura-and-the-church Announcer: The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: Welcome to Via Media. We have been doing a series on how to read the Bible. Today, I have my colleague, Carl Beckwith, who is a specialist in the Fathers. He’s a patristic scholar. Did his PhD at the University of Notre Dame; an M.A. at Yale; and M. Phil at Trinity College, Dublin; and his B.A. at the Lutheran St. Olaf college. Carl, welcome to Via Media. Beckwith: Thank you, Gerry. It’s nice to be here. McDermott: Now, why didn’t you choose some more significant universities to study at? Beckwith: (laughs) McDermott: (laughs) Carl is a church historian, he has a distinguished publication record, he is the author of Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity, published by Oxford University Press. He’s put out an edition that I’ve used of John Gerhard’s Handbook of Consolation. He’s done a commentary on Ezekiel and Daniel and the Reformation commentary series published by IVP. He’s done a wonderful book that I’ve read recently and used in one of my recent books – his book titled The Holy Trinity. He’s also put out a terrific anthology of Martin Luther’s basic exegetical writings, published by Concordia Publishing House. So, Carl, I wanted to talk to you about an article that you have recently published. I’ve got it here in front of me. It is titled “Sola Scriptura, The Fathers and the Church: Arguments from the Lutheran Reformers.” It’s published in the spring 2019 issue of Criswell Theological Review. It raises all sorts of wonderful questions that I’d like to ask you, Carl, concerning how to read the Bible. Maybe I could start by noticing that in your article, Carl, you cite a 20th century Lutheran theologian who says that a church without the Fathers becomes a sect. And then you add that those who commit to sola scriptura, and our Anglican audience knows what sola scriptura is, scripture alone, must not only tolerate the Fathers but endorse the reading of the Fathers by the community of the faithful. What do you mean by that? Could you explain to us a little bit what you mean? Beckwith: Let me start, maybe, with a brief autobiographical comment, and I think you can pick this up from the types of universities I’ve attended, but also as you reviewed my scholarship. My answer ... I think, it’s important to bear this in mind ... I think of myself as a Lutheran patristic scholar. And what I mean by that is my own theological commitment stands strongly with the reformers and it is because of those commitments that I study and read the Church’s Fathers. So, I’m not a patristic scholar that is uninterested in what the Fathers are saying, nor am I patristic scholar that is in any sense removed from my own reformational commitments. Now, with that in mind what I’m getting at ... it’s Hermann Sasse who says that a church without the Fathers becomes a sect. Well, something I show in the article, and I think you see this very clearly when you read the reformers, is their strong insistence upon sola scriptura as the rule and norm for all that the Church confesses; all that the Church believes. Now, I say to my students that that alone is not unique to the Reformation. That’s an important point to bear in mind. I provide quotes in the article at the very head of the article, a very famous quote from Augustine where he reflects similarly upon that. I engage later in the article with Thomas Aquinas and how he uses that same Augustine quote to make this point. Well, the reformers, as I understand them and as I see them lain out in their own theological writings, their own confessional documents, is to say this: that the Church stands under the scriptures and receives from the scriptures that which we believe, teach, and confess. But we never read the scriptures alone as the Church. Rather, we always read the scriptures along with those who have gone before us. So, for me there’s a distinction that’s important here between scripture and what I happily refer to as holy tradition. What makes that tradition holy is the faithful reception, the faithful clarification, of the scriptures. So, as the reformers are reflecting upon scripture they always do so in conversation with the Church Fathers – always deeply learning and reflecting upon the scriptures using the language and the insights of the Fathers and the medieval schoolmen who have gone before them. So, when Sasse says that if you remove the Fathers and you have only scripture you become a sect – as I understand what he’s getting at, it’s the language, the common language, that we speak forth as Christians, which is deeply shaped by the reception of those scriptures throughout the history of the Church. If we remove that history and we now speak forth the scriptures in a sense ignorant of that history or apart from it we begin to use patterns of speech unfamiliar to the broader Church, unfamiliar to those who have gone before us. We speak a language that becomes difficult to follow. McDermott: Right. I tell my students that there are many other groups that claim to use sola scriptura. Jehovah’s Witnesses say, “We are far more devoted to sola scriptura than you protestants are, and even you evangelicals. I mean you talk sola scriptura all the time, but you also believe in the Trinity. And we don’t find the Trinity in the Bible. And you say the Trinity means this particular formula, three persons in one divine being. We don’t see that anywhere in the New Testament. In fact, we see Jesus saying the Father is greater than I. And Jesus saying that he doesn’t know the day or the hour when the Son of Man is going to return. So, we think you are just reading man’s opinions, human tradition onto, into scripture.” I think sometimes students are puzzled by that, because they just assumed that their Trinitarian understandings were more directly taught by scripture than they are, and not mediated by a great tradition of reflection, as you’re talking about, Professor Beckwith. Now- Beckwith: Well, let me respond to that. McDermott: Yeah. Beckwith: Because that very question arises during the Reformation and that very question is put to Martin Luther by his Roman opponents. You need the Church, now we’d have to define these terms, but as Roman opponents are speaking, you need the Church for your understanding of the Trinity. So, if you confess the Trinity you are acknowledging the authority of the Church. Luther responds directly to that to say, no, we confess the Trinity because of scripture and therefore we are confessing with the Church catholic that has gone before us, the witness of scripture itself. So, this idea, and things get very thorny especially in the 16th century, the late medieval debates that come to fruition during the reformation, as to recognizing the authority of scripture and then wrestling with the authoritative interpretation of scripture. And the question becomes: do we need something apart from scripture to determine that meaning? Some of the arguments being put to Luther by his opponents are we do and we need this thing called “church.” We need this thing called “tradition.” Luther is not rejecting tradition, but he is rejecting their understanding of tradition and church. McDermott: Right. There’s good tradition and there’s bad tradition. And the key is discerning the difference. Now, speaking of the Church, you make a proactive statement, well I say “provocative” I would guess for readers of this journal, the Criswell Theological Review, and for a lot of evangelicals. A provocative statement, you say the Fathers were gathered by the Holy Spirit through the Word into the Church. Now, most evangelicals, I mean I was taught as an evangelical that the Holy Spirit gathers the scriptures, but not the Fathers. So, what do you mean by that? That the Fathers were gathered by the Holy Spirit through the Word into the Church? Beckwith: What I mean in that section, I’m simply talking about how it is that we are believers. So, the question has to become: Are the Fathers believers? Are we believers? And if we are believers, as scripture puts it, because of the Holy Spirit at work through the Word, that we would confess Jesus as Lord; that we would be children of God. Not by the will of man, not by blood and so forth. If this is how God makes believers, then the question we have to ask is: Do we recognize the Fathers as believers? And if they are, then they too were gathered by the Holy Spirit through the Word in the Church in the same way that we are. McDermott: Would you say, Dr. Beckwith, that the Holy Spirit was guiding this great tradition through the Fathers and through the Orthodox medievals as opposed to all the medievals? Beckwith: Yeah. If you want me to be provocative, this is how I would provocatively talk about the Fathers, and that is we need to recognize that the history of the Church – whether we’re talking about the patristic, medieval, Reformation – the history of the Church itself is an incredible gift from God. And that we read the Fathers out of gratitude that God, in his providence, has preserved these witnesses for us. And so to be provocative, taking the language of Paul and Peter in a sense, I’m not afraid to say that there’s a sense in which they were writing for us, in the providence of God. Now, I remind my students that we may come to have a disagreement with Athanasius or the Cappadocian’s or Augustine, maybe even Luther or Calvin or so forth, something we need to remember is that God is the author of history, and he has placed us in the 21st century. He didn’t place us in the 4th century where we have some of the most remarkable debates in the history of the Church, some of the most significant debates on the Trinity and Christology. He didn’t put us in the 16th century where you have these debates on the gospel. In a humbling way, he didn’t think enough of us to put us in those places. But he did put Athanasius, he did put the Cappadocian’s and Augustine, he did put Luther and Calvin and the others. That alone ought to tell us – these are significant figures in God’s opinion, and he has preserved their witness for us; a witness that helps us read the scriptures. One of the things I say throughout this article that a catholic position, by which I mean throughout the history of the Church, a catholic understanding of the Fathers is that we read them because we care deeply about the scriptures in reading the scriptures. McDermott: Yeah, let me push you a little bit more on the Church. You say that our, meaning any Christian’s view of sola scriptura says something about our view of the Church. I take it you mean, among other things, that ecclesiology, the theology of the Church, is neglected today. Do you think ... Am I reading you rightly? Beckwith: I do think it’s neglected in the sense that I’m not sure many protestants take the same theological care in reflecting upon the Church as they do other matters. I think a fundamental question that any believer needs to ask is: What is the relationship between scripture and Church? At the end of the article I ask some provocative questions on this. Do you believe scripture because of the Church or do you believe the Church because of scripture? Is that even a fair question to ask? What I’m trying to get a person to think about is: What is the relationship between God’s Word and the people of God gathered together by the Spirit around Word and Sacrament? If we recognize that the Church is a gift from God and, in fact, a creature of the Spirit through the Word, then we see that the Church is indeed Holy because there the Word of God dwells within it, the fear of the Lord, the comfort of the Holy Spirit – this is how the Bible uses the word “catholic” in Acts – that this is the place where God has gathered us all together and that we are to be nourished by that Word in the gathering of the faithful called the Church. Both Luther and Calvin are happy to refer to the Church as our mother, nurturing us, Word and Sacrament, nurturing us on the meanings of Grace. The debate that Luther is encountering in the 16th century is he sees his opponents placing scripture under the Church, rather than the product of the Church reflecting deeply upon those scriptures always, if need be, reforming in light of those scriptures as the Church. McDermott: Luther is routinely cited by protestants as the author of the doctrine of the priesthood of every believer. Of course, I would say that it might go back to Peter. But often ... do you think he’s interpreted wrongly and what I mean by that is it seems to me that many protestants interpret that in a very individualistic sense that Luther never intended, where it’s me, Jesus, and my Bible. That’s all I need. I don’t need the Church to interpret it for me. And so then they conclude, therefore, I don’t really need the Church that much either. Just give me my Bible and I already have Jesus and I can go up on top of the mountain, or on top of the hill, on the other side of the town every Sunday morning – I don’t need church that’s filled with all those hypocrites anyway. Beckwith: I think Luther’s first response would be, the spirit that leads you to think that is not the Holy Spirit. It’s some other spirit that would lead you to think in that way. One of the most often quoted statements, I think, from the Early Church comes from Cyprian. Where Cyprian says things like there’s no salvation outside of the Church. Or, you cannot have God as Father if you do not have Church as mother. Augustine repeats those same sentiments. When you get to the 16th century, you find both Cyprian and Augustine put together in making those claims. Luther says the same thing in his large catechism. There is no salvation outside of the Church, because salvation must come to us from God, and it comes by his means. So, one of the big challenges, I think, on the question of Church today is people never ask the fundamental theological question that you see throughout the history of the Church, and that is: What are the marks of the Church? How can I identify this thing called Church? It has distinguishing marks. It has identifiable marks by which I can point and look and say: That is Church, as opposed to something else. For example, I ask the students this in class, if you have a gathering of believers, maybe they have a Bible and they’re reading that Bible together and they offer a prayer and maybe they even sing a hymn, is that Church? And for someone like Luther it’s not. It’s a Churchly-looking thing, perhaps, but it isn’t Church. Because Church is where you also have the office of ministry, where God has called a man into that office through the congregation, through the gathering of the faithful, to administer His gifts to His people. So, where you find ... and this is the definition of Church that you find throughout the 16th century: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican – it’s where the Word of God is rightly preached and the sacraments are administered rightly according to the Word. And that happens where you also find the office of ministry – the gift that we also have from God where we call a man into that office to administer those gifts. So, the question on the priesthood of all believers – it’s priesthood, it’s not pastor-hood, as one of my students has put it before. For Luther, the priesthood of all believers is in fact that which belongs to all of us as our calling as baptized Christians, to offer sacrifices of both prayer and praise and our service to those around us. This is what we all do as baptized Christians. What the office, or I’m sorry, what the priesthood of all believers does not mean, is that I don’t need the Church or I can disrupt the good order of the Church by simply standing up one day saying, “I think I’ll take it from here, Pastor, have a seat.” That’s not at all what Luther has in mind in this debate on the priesthood of all believers. McDermott: Right. Thank you. Now, you’re article refers to the catholic position and you mentioned that word “catholic” at least once in this conversation in the last few minutes. What do you mean when you use the word “catholic?” Beckwith: I tend to use the word catholic in the way that you find it in the Early Church, and I think that’s how the Lutherans are using it as well in the Book of Concord. On the one hand I made reference to Acts 9. This is where the word appears in scripture, that the Church gathered throughout all of Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, gathered in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit and it’s multiplying. In the Greek that’s ekklesia kath holes, the catholic Church, catholic. It’s the universal Church, the Church scattered throughout all, where we recognize one another by the Spirit in Christ. The other way in which you begin to see the word used, and this is fairly early on, too, is to distinguish the faithful reception of the scriptures, among the faithful as the Church catholic, from competing claims to Christianity. So, over against, for example, some of these Early Church heresies, the Gnostics, the Arians, and so forth. So, there it becomes a term to distinguish competing Christian claims, but it’s still building upon that scriptural use of the faithful scattered throughout the world. McDermott: We’ve talked about the necessity of the Church for Luther and false interpretations of priesthood of every believer. You mention in your article that when someone asked Luther about how to become holy he said, well, through the Christian Church. I know a lot of my friends in various churches would say, well, that’s giving too much authority to the Church. It might suggest that the church, rather than Christ is holy, and it ignores all the sin that we see all around us in the Church. How can we become holy through the Church? Beckwith: The only thing that makes anything holy is the Word of God. There is no holiness apart from God and apart from His Word. So, for Luther, when he is thinking ... well, for example ... I mention this in the article that Luther keeps hearing these accusations. The Church, the Church, the Fathers, the Fathers, to disagree with this is to be a heretic. And Luther responds on the one hand that we, too, would say the Church. But the only church that Luther recognizes is the Church that preaches Christ and his salvation for us and this it does by the working of the Spirit through the means of grace, through the Word and through Sacrament. In another place Luther will make this somewhat provocative claim. And he’s doing this in the 1530s. This isn’t ... sometimes people want to distinguish between and early Luther and a later Luther. On this point Luther is consistent throughout his reforming career. Luther says that the Church in Rome is holy. Now, Luther says this in a very provocative way. The Church in Rome has the antichrist as pope. It has wicked cardinals and monks throughout. It’s filled with false doctrine. It’s filled with a lot of false teaching and certainly sin, for Luther. But nonetheless it is holy because it has the Word of God. It has the scriptures. It has baptism. And he goes on to list things from the liturgy. It has the Lord’s Prayer. It has elements of the liturgy that are confessing and pointing us to the gospel. So, when we talk about, from a Lutheran point of view, when we talk about the Church has holy we’re again talking about where the Word of God richly dwells and where God makes use of that Word by His Spirit to create, to strengthen, to sustain believers. That is what makes the Church holy. It is only then in the hearing of that Word and the reception of that Word by grace through faith that we, too, are holy. We are holy, of course, in Christ, but also our lives are holy as we go forth living in the different callings God has given to us being shaped by His Word. McDermott: Now, we Anglicans as well as Orthodox Lutherans believe that we’re in continuity with the small “c” catholic Church as well as some aspects of the capital “c” Roman Catholic Church. So, perhaps the most important figure on the other side of the Tiber is Thomas Aquinas, the doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. You discuss Thomas in here and you talk about how Thomas distinguished when he was considering what has final authority, what’s our final norm. He distinguished between the scripture and the Fathers on authority. How did he distinguish those two? Beckwith: You can find this in a number of his writings. The Summa Contra Gentiles, this extracurricular work that comes out of his own classroom teaching and reflection. At the very beginning of that Summa he has this reflection on authority. But maybe more famously in his mature Summa Theologica. At the beginning, the very first question on Sacra Doctrina he asks the question of authority and he offers us there a hierarchy of authorities. Scripture alone establishes the articles of faith for Thomas. The Articles of Faith are those things that we confess based on Revelation alone. They are beyond reason. It is only God who makes these things known to us and he talks to us a little bit about what he means by that. The doctrine of the Trinity, doctrine of Christ, salvation in Christ, and so forth. There are other things that we can know by reason. He calls those preambles to the Articles of Faith. Things like the existence of God. But when it comes to the Articles of Faith these are revealed in scripture alone and these are to be received for our salvation, and we receive them by faith. He then asks the question about other authorities beyond scripture and he says that any other authority, any human authority is by definition a fallible authority, because we are sinners, we are not perfect, and we are not inerrant in the way that the scriptures are. Now, the Church Fathers, though fallible, aim to open the scriptures up for us. They’re attempting to faithfully read scripture and therefore we exercise a great deal of patience with them in reading those scriptures, but we always bear in mind the distinction between scripture and the Fathers, between that which is infallible and that which is fallible. His third item that he lists are philosophers. Now, they’re fallible, but they also stand apart from scripture. They’re not trying to interpret scripture for us, and yet they can offer very useful things in our own wrestling of scripture, our own articulation of scripture, and we should take that and use it to help our own teaching on scripture. But his distinction is not at all unusual. You can find in different words the same thing with Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, before him and then certainly after him with Luther and Calvin. Recognizing a clear distinction between scripture and human witnesses to that scripture. McDermott: Now, Robert Barnes was an early reformer in England, we would call him an Anglican, who also wrote about the Fathers and he cited another writer, but he was citing him positively, he was writing about the Fathers, and some Anglicans don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the Fathers. I would argue as an Anglican theologian that a principle Anglican, or perhaps the best Anglican method is to read the Bible at the feet of the Fathers. But you mentioned this Robert Barnes, how did he ... at least as far as we can tell from his positively affirming this quotation by this other author ... how did he regard the Fathers Vis-à-vis scripture? Beckwith: Some of these debates happening at the beginning of the Reformation in the 1520s and especially in the 1530s have to do with continuity. With what is being said in the 16th century either by Luther’s Roman opponents or those sympathetic to what Luther is doing. Who stands in continuity with the broader history of the Church? So, you begin to see in the 1520s and ‘30s a number of additions being created of the Church Fathers. Erasmus, for example, creates a number of these very helpful additions. You begin to see translations of the Fathers. You begin to see this with Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius – a number of these sort of second level reformers really offering translations of the works of the Fathers to show the continuity between what the reformers were doing and what the Early Church Fathers had said. Robert Barnes offers a catalogue of the Fathers and he provides excerpts from them. So, they’re kind of lengthy quotations. He organizes ... the particular work you’re referencing ... organizes those excerpts according to different theological topics. So, in other words, Barnes will say this is what we believe about scripture and he’s giving, here, the reformational view on scripture. And now he provides a number of quotations from the Church Fathers. This is what they thought of scripture. And then he’ll do the same with justification, good works, the Church, the sacraments, and so forth, and every time he is providing quotations from the Fathers. What this work does is it aims to show not just continuity, right, it’s not just a polemical exercise to say you’re wrong and I’m right, because Augustine stands with me here. It’s not that at all. It’s to recognize that our reception of the scriptures happens both within the Church and through the witnesses of the Church. This is a bit of a digression, but let me put this out there for a second. One of the biggest challenges I think we face today when it comes to scriptural interpretation, and this is always going to be, every generation has to struggle with rightly receiving and proclaiming the scriptures and the task of doing this within the Church. But here’s the biggest struggle that we face today, is we do this in a way that is unheard of in the history of the Church. In the Early Church all the way up into the Reformation theological reflection has always happened within the Church, surrounded by pulpit, altar, and fount. It is an exercise of the faithful, receiving the scriptures as the faithful, coming together with the best minds to reflect on whatever significant problems come our way. Slowly as you go in the history of the Church this already begins in the medieval period, you start to move from monastery to cathedral school to the universities, Luther is in the university, I mean, the Reformation is happening in the university, but never apart from the Church. Luther is lecturing in the university hall, and he’s preaching in the Church in Wittenberg as well. These are the avenues where the Reformation is being articulated. Well, fast forward to today. You can go to any library and you can find numerous commentaries on scripture. You no longer know where the author of that commentary is, say, for example on a Sunday morning. This could be an academic exercise reflecting upon very deeply and helpfully the language and the history of whatever book of the Bible it is, but it’s a step removed now from the Church. Not being surrounded by the means of grace for the faithful. That, I think, is one of the greatest challenges that we have and this is something that the reformers appreciated. This is why they’re so interested in what the Church Fathers are saying, because they care so deeply about rightly understanding the scriptures. McDermott: So, we have Fathers saying scripture is the final norm. We have the reformers saying scripture is the final norm. We have even later Roman Catholics saying scripture is the final norm as interpreted properly by the magisterium, by the Catholic magisterium. What about when there are competing interpretations of the scripture as final norm? So, for example, on issues such as penance, Eucharist – is there a real presence, what’s the nature of the real presence – purgatory, is there a purgatory? You know? Today for instance you even have sola scriptura theologians in the evangelical world, like Jerry Walls, the Methodist, and John Stackhouse, the Baptist. I think John is a Baptist. Saying they read purgatory in scripture. So, what do we do then when there are competing interpretations of scripture by theologians who all around cite the scripture as final norm? Beckwith: The first thing we do is we ask Dr. McDermott. McDermott: (laughs) Beckwith: (laughs) Scriptural controversy and disagreement is itself scriptural. This is what Galatians is about. Peter and Paul are arguing different claims on how Christianity and Judaism relate to one another. We could multiply those examples from scripture itself. As soon as we exit the New Testament, as an example, the early letters by Ignatius of Antioch already exhibit significant theological disagreement within the Christian community. And Ignatius gives us explanations of what these competing claims are. At every stage in the history of the Church we find competing claims as to what the Bible means. That is not new. This isn’t something that only occurred to our generation. This is something we see throughout the history of the Church. Now, the question becomes this: I recognize scripture as the authority for all that I believe, teach, and confess. If you can’t even say that much, quite honestly it’s not theology you’re doing, it’s philosophy or something like that. So, for me, all of those that would fail to acknowledge scripture as authority become uninteresting. But once you acknowledge scripture as authority you now have a significant hurdle to get over, and that is what constitutes faithful interpretation of the scriptures? That’s the point that is being debated. That’s not new with the Reformation. All of these late medieval debates on some of the issues you just named, not so much on purgatory, but certainly on penance, certainly on the Lord’s Supper, on the authority of the pope – these are all late medieval debates happening among late medieval scholastic theologians before there is such a thing as the Reformation, who all agree on the authority of scripture, but they do not agree on what settles the debates that we have on the meaning of scripture. Some want to have the pope make that final decision. Others want to have canon law make that other, that final decision. Others want to say the Fathers. Well, the problem with having the Fathers settle the dispute is that the Fathers don’t always agree. This is why they’re fallible. This is what Thomas Aquinas was recognizing. In my opinion, laying claim to the pope as the final authority on scripture in some sense punts, it punts on the difficult task of scriptural interpretation. It says this figure, this individual will be now accorded the authority that we’re all seeking to settle the dispute. Well, I’m a Lutheran historian and theologian, but I know enough about the history of the Roman Catholic Church to point our significant disagreements from one pope to the next. Even when these popes are speaking authoritatively. Papal infallibility, the idea of the Church’s indefectibility. These are late medieval developments within the Church because of the struggle over the interpretation of scripture. What do we do about that? It’s hard. It’s hard. We do the very thing that the reformers point us to. We pray. We meditate deeply upon the scripture and the reception of the scripture throughout the history of the Church. We go forth living faithfully in our callings and within the context of the Church we continue to struggle over those interpretations. That’s what we do. It requires theological maturity. It requires patience. It often requires repentance. Identifying ... let me put it this way: theological reflection should always be centered, I would argue and we learn this from the Fathers and the reformers, should always be centered upon Christ and the gospel. And that lens can help us in our other points of disagreement, sorting through what scripture has to say. It doesn’t make it easy, but it can help us. McDermott: So, what are some of the biggest problems today that this discussion can help with? Beckwith: Well, I think today we need to continue thinking seriously about scripture as the authoritative Word of God. We need to continue laboring hard in our own efforts at reading the reception of those scriptures through the history of the Church, and we should do so as an act of gratitude that God has in fact preserved these witnesses for us. We should also do so as an act of ... this is the language I like to use, as an act of kinship, that by my baptism, I have been grafted into this thing called the Body of Christ, and it can get uncomfortable at times. Because I will discover there are voices that challenge me in different ways. I will discover there are moments of disagreement. I think this is something we very much struggle with today. We struggle to face disagreement. We would much rather get rid of those competing voices. Today it seems as if we love the medieval notion of burning people at the stake that disagree with us and then we can just get rid of those differing opinions. I think as an act of both gratitude and kinship we need that. But we also need to recognize that we should continue reflecting upon what the Church is in our day and how these voices from the history of the Church will help us pushing into these new moments that we find ourselves in the history of the Church. McDermott: Now, you mentioned burning people ... the medievals burning people at the stake, and I think there’s a lot of that today. Getting rid of those, disinviting them from campus lectures because we disagree with them. But there’s also the medieval tradition of disputation. Days long disputations, right, over the meaning of scripture on a disputed topic. And maybe that’s what we need ... it seems to me from listening to you. That’s what you’re saying we need to do more of, within the Church, with humility and repentance, and deep consultation with those who have gone before us who are men and women of faith within the Church. Beckwith: I agree. McDermott: Well, I’m glad that this Lutheran and this Anglican agree. Thanks for joining in today on Via Media. Beckwith: Thanks for having me. Announcer: You've been listening to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott, the director of The Institute of Anglican Study Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.